1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for managing data storages. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for storing a piece of data into incompatibly formatted storage systems.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, computer systems have experienced great advances in processor speed, performance, available memory, and system architecture. Often times, they are rendered obsolete within months of being announced. Large customers, such as, major corporations and other institutions that want or need to keep their systems at or near state-of-the-art performance levels are constantly upgrading their computer systems. Generally, these large customers tend to maintain brand loyalty. This often occurs for a variety of reasons of which the following are but a few: (1) no need to retrain personnel, (2) data compatibility, (3) cost. The present invention provides a solution to the data compatibility issue and, thus, affords these customers a greater degree of freedom to choose among a plurality of computer systems when upgrading to newer and faster systems.
One of the reasons for data incompatibility is that some computer systems format data differently than others. In addition, this differently formatted data is often stored into storage systems that are themselves formatted differently than those used by the other computer systems. For example, Sun Microsystems computer systems running Solaris operating system (OS) format and store data differently than IBM computer systems running AIX OS, although both Solaris and AIX OSs are UNIX-based OSs. Hence, data from a Sun Microsystems computer system is not compatible with an IBM computer system and vice versa.
Consequently, when a customer upgrades from one set of computer systems to another set that is incompatible with the first set, the older machines are not ordinarily used anymore. The data that was generated by the older computer systems may continue to be used if converted into a format compatible with the new computer systems. However, as is well known in the field, most conversion algorithms are not ideal and therefore, often times not all the data is converted.
What is needed, therefore, is an apparatus and method of storing copies of data into incompatibly formatted data storage systems, thus, allowing customers to upgrade to newer computer systems and have previously-stored data be available without conversion.